ah, the days of being a freshman

January 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

This semester I'm making up a few gen-ed classes I passed up when I first started here at USC. I really didn't want to take them the first time through -- so I didn't -- and I really don't desire all too much to take them now.

GE classes aren't like other classes. They think you're a Freshman, so they're strict. Strict attendance policies, mandatory discussion sections, pop quizes... GEs have them all.

I'm in Religions of Asia right now (both for the semester, and as I write this). If you follow that link and click through to the requirements, you'll find that they "tolerate" one discussion section absense. Well isn't that generous...

I used to tolerate being a student. It was one of those things I had to do -- and I guess it still is -- but now I'm just ready to be done. I want to get out into the world, to do something cool.

How am I supposed to do anything cool when I'm stuck in a room on a Wednesday morning with a bunch of freshman talking about the stuff that we've already gone over in the lecture?

mmmm wireless

January 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Sitting waiting for class to start... This class is BISC 230: Brain, Mind, and Machines. Hopefully this will go short so that I can go get some food. I loved not starting until 12:30 today. I got up around 9:30, read about 30 pages in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I'm on page 300 or so at this point, so I won't write anything about it until I finish. At about 915 pages, that could be a little while. So I read a little, messed around on the computer for a while, and then got ready around 11:45. All in all a relaxing morning.

make to the routine

January 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Classes start today. I basically have just Tuesday/Thursday classes again this semester (minus one discussion on Wednesday morning), and today I don't start until 12:30. Granted my day today does run until 10pm, though. My classes today: Brain, Mind, and Machine: Topics in Neuroscience, Writing 340 (Advanced Writing for Social Science), Religions of Asia, and History of the American Film, 1977-Present. You know, actually that's all of my classes.

I need to figure out a new routine for having my laptop battery charged up going into my 6pm class. I either need to not use it much in the classes before, or find an outlet during one of my classes. My only real break today is 5:30 - 6, and that's not going to be enough for anything more than a bite to eat.

I'm trying to figure out if Toshiba even sells a second battery for the Satellite A10. I can't seem to find one. They sell the primary battery for $100, though, so that might not be a bad idea to pick that up and just carry a spare to swap in.

still fighting the system

January 12, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I bought a new hard drive today... 160GB IDE drive from Staples for $140. The 120GB was $130, so 160 seemed to be the sweet spot in the price curve right now. Since my computer refuses to boot from cd, I took the drive over to Kathy's, popped it in the place of her drive, and installed Linux on it that way. That part went fine.

Then I grab the drive, bring it back to my place, and throw it in my computer. Success, it boots up just fine. But now a 60GB IDE drive I have music on doesn't want to be recognized. The BIOS had never detected it right, but before Linux picked it up just fine. Now, though, it doesn't.

I don't want to bore this space with a litany of details, but if you're interested click to read on... — Continue Reading...

just what i wanted

January 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So my desktop is pretty much down for the count. I don't know what caused the drive to go screwy -- it most likely had something to do with the power supply shutting down quickly when it overheated after the fan died, but I don't know for sure -- but whatever it is must have done its job well. The computer also refuses to boot from a CD, even after trying multiple boot cds and two cd-rom drives, so it's entirely possible the motherboard's not all with it.

So that's cool. I don't really have a sure plan of action yet. I think I need to buy a new hard drive (which I really needed anyway), install Linux on it in another computer, transfer the drive over to my computer, pray that it works, and then try to recover data from there. We'll see how that goes.

My laptop hard drive hasn't died yet, even though I think it's about to every time it makes a noise. I think I'm going to need it to last another week while I figure this other unpleasantry out.